


Poppet

by C_aura (Coragyps)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Caretaking, Dean Winchester Takes Care of Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester in Denial, Dean just wants Sam to be happy, Episode Related, Episode: s15e06 Golden Time, Gen, Schmoop, Voodoo doll, he is just a marshmallow, probable misuse of voodoo dolls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coragyps/pseuds/C_aura
Summary: He almost kicked the stupid doll, which was lying on the floor next to the creepy dead brunette. He picked it up automatically and stuffed it into his coat. It would be idiotic to leave it lying around, considering how Sam had reacted when the thing had been abused. They needed to get it back to the bunker and take the whammy off of it.As soon as it was secured Dean forgot all about it, too focused on checking over dumbass little brothers who had somehow gotten their asses kicked on what was supposed to be a milk run.[Because I had to know, what happened to that Sammy voodoo doll after the end of this episode??]
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & his own self loathing, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 70





	Poppet

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, all I can write right now is Sam/Dean gen fluff, which I realize aren't my most popular stories - but the muse wants what she wants! I am setting myself the goal of finishing ten stories during quarantine - is anybody with me??
> 
> Also, I realized this probably should be a chapter in my other fic Physical Therapy so I think I'm going to incorporate it there at the end of quarantine. Just in case anybody is looking for it later.

After the case with the creepy witch family Sam was a little beat up, and Dean wanted to get him and Eileen back home sooner rather than later. But it turned out Eileen needed some Ghost Recharge Time after what had been an epic dead person battle, and she signed to Sam that she was going to flicker out and then disappeared.

Dean rushed to Sammy’s side and got him sitting up, trying to lever him up to his feet so he could pile him into the car. He almost kicked the stupid voodoo doll, which was lying on the floor next to the creepy dead brunette. He picked it up automatically and stuffed it into his coat. It would be idiotic to leave it lying around; considering how Sam had reacted when the thing had been abused, it had clearly caused him a lot of pain. They needed to take it back to the bunker and take the whammy off of it. And as soon as it was secured Dean forgot all about it, too focused on checking over dumbass little brothers who had somehow gotten their asses kicked on what was supposed to be a milk run.

Sam hissed when Dean pulled his head up, checking his eyes – no concussion, good – and didn’t pull away when Dean ran a quick palm over the crown of his skull, checking for a cut. In fact Sam leaned subtly into the hand and tricked Dean into doing that thing they did sometimes where Dean kind of petted his hair a little, and maybe it made both of them feel better. But there was nothing really wrong with him, all those Sasquatch limbs still in one piece, too damn skinny around the waist and thighs but not hurt, thank God, not seriously hurt.

“Let’s get you back,” said Dean, hoisting him up and getting him loaded into Baby – and if he dug out the old army blanket from the back of the car and got Sam swaddled up, well, that was just because Sam tended to pout if he didn’t get the special treatment after dealing with covens.

Dean was kind of proud of Junior Witch Sammy, to be honest. It was the kind of thing he wouldn’t have liked even a few years ago – dad would’ve flipped his shit for sure – but honestly, Rowena had saved their frigging asses so many times he would have to be an even bigger idiot than he was not to realize that it was damn useful stuff. He’d have to find a way to bring it up to Sam, make sure broody little brothers didn’t think this was a problem.

Sam dozed on and off the whole way home but it wasn’t good quality sleep, Dean could tell. Too much shifting and murmuring for that. Even when Dean played his favorite sleepytime music, it didn’t work for long.

Sam hadn’t been sleeping well, that much was obvious. He looked like crap. Little toothpick legs from all that running, his face gaunt like something that needed salting, even his hair had lost some of its shiny luster lately. Dean got them home without incident and Eileen was waiting for them, so Sammy fucked off with her to try some crazy spell. Good luck on that whole thing.

So he had honestly forgotten all about the doll, is the point. He realized it was still tucked into his inside jacket pocket when he went to his room to change, and he put it – carefully – on the dresser to deal with later, when Sam had the time to look up the right mumbo jumbo to turn it back into sticks and straw. It was a creepy little thing, not even a doll really, just a bundle of twigs in the roughest human shape. And if Sam was pretty twig like these days, that was really none of Dean’s business.

And if he took a second to smooth his fingertip over the little piece of Sam’s hair that was tied onto the doll’s “head” - well that was nobody’s business but his own.

He had half an idea that it might be funny, to like, tickle it or poke it or something, but he was more mature than he used to be these days and he knew better than to screw around with magic crap that they didn’t really understand ... At least, on a good day he knew that.

He was going to get rid of it, was the point. It wasn’t like, some kind of plan that he had. But then there was a whole bunch of excitement as the spell worked out, and Sam was like, glowing with pride, and Eileen was flesh and blood, and there was some serious drinking to be done in celebration of all that, and it slipped his mind again.

And then after all the celebrating at the end of the night Dean ended up back in his room, and Sam was finally supposed to be getting nailed, except he could hear Sam pacing in the library even though the fucker had said he was going to bed. And it was well after it was time for good little brothers to go to sleep – but he wasn’t going to get his head bitten off by saying that, obviously, he had learned after the first five hundred times thank you – and the doll was right there next to Dean’s watch when he took it off and put it in his usual spot.

So he sort of … started to mess with it a little. It was weird, okay? He knew it was weird. But it occurred to him that if the doll was Sam, and Sam needed to go to bed, then maybe Dean just had to … put the doll to bed? That seemed kind of logical, right?

Things had been so shitty for so long. He understood why Sam was a little brokedown at the moment. He felt it too.

So feeling kind of stupid, he went and got a spare pillow out of the closet and put the doll on top of it, and he used a few of his less bloodstained bandanas as blankets. And then he just … rubbed the doll’s back a little, with one finger, the same rhythm he used to use when he’d rub Sam’s back as a little kid.

“Go to sleep, Sammy,” he muttered to the doll. “It’s okay. Big Brother’s here. You don’t need to worry, Sammy. We'll fix everything. I’ll apologize to Cas, I’ll make Eileen breakfast, I'll cut back on the drinking. But you gotta take care of yourself too, huh? So just close your eyes and get some rest.”

Dean didn’t really have much aptitude for magic, besides the bare minimum required for the job, but he hoped that this was one of those handy spells where the intent was enough. He concentrated on sending good thoughts – sleep thoughts – through the doll into Sam. 

When he crept down the hallway to the library, he found Sammy stretched out on top of the map table, sound asleep with his jacket thrown over him like a blanket. Maybe the thing with the doll had really worked, or maybe he’d just run out of steam after a long day, although it seemed weird he hadn’t at least gone into his own room.

Dean covered him up with a proper extra blanket, then let him sleep it off.

According to Dean’s research – okay, he skimmed one book – this thing was a poppet. Those witches weren’t voodoo people, and there’s was nothing specific about pins going on, so voodoo doll was not the right term.

Also, the spell to remove the connection to Sam seemed a little tricky; Dean knew he should probably get Sam, Rowena’s great apprentice, to undertake it, versus risk butchering it himself, which could kill Sammy if done wrong. But Sam was distracted at the moment, thrilled to have Eileen back among the living, and Dean was trying to stay out of their way, hoping maybe it would help Little Brother finally hook up and maybe get someone to pull that stick out of his ass.

The witch being dead and all, the magic wasn’t really strong enough to like, _compel_ Sam – which was a relief. It could possibly, uh, _influence_ Sam, just a little. He realized early on that, as long as he didn’t hurt the poppet, the effects were so subtle that Sam couldn’t necessarily even perceive them as being unnatural. If he got sleepy sometimes, if he didn’t feel as chilly as he had, if he occasionally got a warm, subtle sense of reassurance – I mean, who starts looking for a cursed object, ya know? 

It made sense, Dean guessed – he had heard of witches using poppet magic in real subtle spells, like leaving the doll to dissolve in water, or even keeping it tucked away in a hearth to keep it safe. (He … kinda didn’t hate that idea).

Okay, Dean knew it was weird. Obviously. Even besides the “whole grown men shouldn’t play with dolls” thing, it was weird, because this “doll” was an ugly bundle of sticks and little brother hair, not to mention because it magically influenced his actual little brother on the other end.

He left it alone when Sam was happy. If he was awkward flirting with Eileen, if he was doing his morning calisthenics of whatever, Dean didn’t bother him. He wasn’t a total jerk.

But you know, the bunker got drafty, being partially underground and all. Dean knew he shouldn’t fuss over Sammy in front of his little girl friend, so he didn’t bother him about layering up after his shower (the dumbass acted like it was totally fine to walk around with wet hair in their underground lair) or when it was very late or very early and the place was maybe forty degrees. Time was he would have picked a fight about it, but now he had a recourse; just stroll back to his room and bundle the Sammy Doll up in the wool scarf that Charlie had knitted him that time she’d stayed there over Christmas. Figured it would do for both warmth and protection, being no doubt still faintly possessed with Charlie’s love. And if Sam looked a little less pale and pinch faced, whether he knew it or not, well, that was a good thing, right? Dean wasn’t doing anything wrong.

He knew if Sam hadn’t been distracted with Eileen’s miraculous reincarnation – and as much as Dean truly did like Eileen, it also make him a little sore that they hadn’t gotten the chance to try the spell for their mom, whose absence felt like the time he had scraped all the skin off his arm when he fell from a stolen bike as a kid – he knew Sam would have remembered to defuse the poppet. But with everything that was going on, it had probably just slipped his baby brother’s giant nerd brain. So Dean figured he’d just take good care of the thing until the right moment came about to, uh, set things right.

So maybe he was a little too invested in the doll right now.

Doing a little more reading, it seemed like the poppet could possibly have some protective abilities, so Dean figured he might as well get on that since he was focused on staying out of the way of the middle school level flirting that his brother was trying to get away with. He made a circle of salt water and put the doll’s bed in the middle, with the doll bundled up in Charlie’s scarf. It was kind of weird that this thing was taking up the whole top of his dresser at this point, so he moved the whole thing to an unused room that Sam wouldn’t poke around in – a room with good natural light, because it didn’t seem right to leave the poppet in the dark, but obviously out of direct sunlight, in case it caused the doll to fade or scorch.

He liked the sight of the bundled up Sammy Doll on its little bed, to be honest. The book wasn’t really clear, but it seemed like possibly keeping the doll safe could even extend some kind of protection to Sam himself, like if the real Sam got in trouble the Doll Sam could offer some measure of protection. And Dean liked that idea.

Dean spent a rather enjoyable afternoon hiding in the room with the doll, actually, re-watching some movies on Sam’s laptop. He knew he was getting into that mood that nobody liked, where he was kind of maudlin and withdrawn and didn’t make good eye contact and none of his fake smiles were that convincing. But this was just a phase in the endless cycle of Dean Winchester Bouncing Back. It was slightly more palatable to the Drinking In The Dark and Breaking Stuff phase, which tended to freak Sammy out, and sometimes resulted in the Dean Winchester Fucking Off So He Wouldn’t Freak Sammy Out phase. Fake Dean was step two, and they all knew it, and there wasn’t much else to do about it other than wait it out. So if his latest thing was the Sammy Doll, well, they’d just have to deal with that too.

Even now that he seemed to be taking the first tentative steps towards getting a girlfriend, Sam still didn’t eat well. Dean did a little digging and found out that the poppet could even be used to nourish someone who was sick, and although even he could admit that things were getting a little out of hand at this point, he spent a day whipping up some doll food. It just had to be in the form of food, apparently, in order to work. So he used a toothpaste cap for a cup, and a washer for a plate, and he put a crumb of bread and a glass of milk in bed with the doll. And he petted the Sammy hair that was still jauntily sticking out of the top of the weird stick head and told Sammy to eat up. He couldn’t tell if it really worked, but he told himself maybe Sam looked a little less pale at breakfast the next morning. He was laughing with Eileen and didn’t notice that he took an extra plate of pancakes when Dean dished it up.

Dean stayed behind to wash up and then figured he’d sneak back to the spare room and try the doll on something like a toothpaste cap full of beer – maybe he’d relax enough to, you know, actually make a move instead of this pathetic flirting act – but Sam appeared in the hallway almost like he’d been waiting for him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Sup,” said Dean. “You heading out for a run?”

“Nah, figured I can take one day off. What about you? Car stuff?”

There was actually nothing to do for the Impala at the moment, since she didn’t get out as often as she once had, and Dean had just given her a thorough once over a week back. But that sounded like a good cover story to get rid of an older brother and go mack on a recent spirit, so Dean didn’t point it out. “Yeah, that might be good,” he said. He really wanted to get back to check on the doll. He was paranoid it would start to rot or something, and then he really would have to figure out how to disconnect it from Sammy before his little brother got moldy.

“Haven’t seen much of you lately,” said Sam, in that too casual little brother voice that had never fooled anyone.

“Check your memory banks, HAL, we just hung out eating breakfast together for like two hours.”

“You didn’t say much. I think I counted maybe ten words.”

“You don’t need to check up on me, Sammy, I’m doing good. I promise.”

“I know you and Cas are going through a thing just now,” said Sam carefully, “but you’ll work it out. Okay? And I know you miss mom – I miss her too – but we just have to remember that she’s better off where she is, you know?”

If anyone else had said something like that, Dean probably would have had a really cutting response, but since it was Sammy, who said it while looking down at his feet with his floppy hair sliding into his eyes, Dean couldn’t work up the energy to get mad. Sam probably needed to hear that kind of thing for his own reasons, and Dean wasn’t going to be the one to take it away from him.

So he just patted Sam’s shoulder and made to move past. “Yeah.”

But Sam’s hand whipped out – snake fast – to catch Dean’s wrist and hold him in place. “Dean. Wait, hold up. I wanted to ask you if you wanted to watch movies with us. Eileen didn’t see any of the new Star Wars, being dead and all.”

They all felt that, of course – both boys had missed some quality pop culture over the years, being dead or otherwise unreachable. Dean was sympathetic to Eileen’s situation but it brought up too many bad memories - he didn’t want to get dragged back down into Drinking Phase having clawed his way up to Fake Happy.

“Nah, Sammy, I’m good man. But have fun catching her up to nerd speed.” What he really wanted to do was go check on that doll. He was itching to make sure it was properly bundled up, because he was pretty sure if he left out a foot or a hand or something Sammy would start to feel the chill in that extremity. And to be honest Dean didn’t really want him to catch on to the whole fixation with the doll thing. He had the feeling that was going to be hard to explain.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Dean offered his most convincing fake smile – he’d been working on it, and it would have fooled anyone else but Sam. But he brushed past him and was gone before there were any followup questions.

Dean found some books on poppet magic and spent the day in the spare room with the doll. There were spells he could do in concert with the poppet that looked easy enough – harmless little things, like adding a circle of rosemary water for health, or a bouquet of herbs that weren’t hard to come by. It turned out the poppet could best be “fed” by being sprinkled with dried fruit that could add health and vigor to the subject. Sure, Dean felt stupid doing his little dolly tea party ritual, but if it gave Sam an extra boost he wasn’t complaining.

He missed his own lunch and wandered into the kitchen shortly before dinner with a rumbling stomach.

“Where the hell have you been all day?” asked Sam. “I went to look for you out in the garage to see if you wanted pizza, but you weren’t out there.”

“I was reading,” said Dean, which was true, although _Spellwyrk of Ancien Eire_ wasn’t exactly Vonnegut. “Is there leftover pizza?”

“No. Have a vegetable.” Sam watched him put together dinner – a bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee. He wondered if he could give the doll coffee somehow and perk him up if Sam was tired. If intent was all that mattered, it should work, right?

“Eileen thinks you’re avoiding her.”

“I’m not avoiding her. I like Eileen.” They were out of spoons, so Dean put aside the bowl of cereal to wash some, but Sam took them out of his hand and dug one out of the back of the drawer. At Dean’s dubious expression, he rinsed it off before handing it over and starting the hot water for the rest of them.

“You’re avoiding something. Me?”

“Not avoiding anything. Just – waiting for the next fight, I guess. No need to rush me, it’ll come soon enough.”

Sam’s hair looked kind of greasy from the back. Dean hoped that the weird thing he’d been doing where sometimes he petted the doll’s hair – he found it kind of soothing, to be honest, when he couldn’t sleep - wasn’t messing it up. The book said if he channeled love and care into the doll, it wouldn’t cause harm.

Sam sighed. “Please come finish the series with us tonight. Okay? You don’t have to do or say anything. Just sit there and watch.”

That was hard to refuse, when he threw in the puppy eyes and everything. Dean shrugged. “Sure. Not sure why you’re so desperate to bring your big brother on your dates though. It was cute when you were twelve but you’re a big boy now.”

Sam was flushed all over, which was cute. “If Eileen wants to stay with us, she has to get along with both of us,” he muttered.

That was too cute. Dean reached to ruffle his hair. It felt just like the doll’s, soft as cornsilk.

The movies were nice. Being with Sam and Eileen was nice. They weren't like, overt with the PDA in his face. It wasn't so bad. Dean even managed to crack a smile that felt kind of authentic, and that was a first.

He knew he had to get rid of the doll eventually. He had actually found a few spells now that could break the connection – ones that didn’t look too hard. A few chanted words, some burned sage for purification, consecrated dirt. It could be done in a few minutes and then Sam could have his bodily autonomy back or whatever.

The book said poppet magic wasn’t strong enough to save a life in the real world. The magic that had been strong enough to send Sam to the floor was pretty short lived and had to be focused with a lot of hate. Just fussing over the poppet wasn’t going to change the outcome of their current apocalypse. Dean knew that. It had just been – nice, to pretend for a while, that he could make some kind of difference.

He waited until Sam and Eileen fell asleep and then took the bundled-up doll outside. Carried it out to the little woods behind the bunker, standing under the dark blue sky. It was cold in November. The stars were crisp and clear overhead.

He stroked its soft hair a few more times, and then muttered the spell that would turn it back into a harmless collection of twigs and string. When he finished the ritual, he untied the twine and the whole thing slid easily back down into the leaves, returning to the forest. The hair caught the wind, the strands going everywhere, probably going to end up in bird’s nests and rabbit dens.

He liked to come out here sometimes when he didn’t want to bum everyone out thinking about mom. This kind of felt like a different kind of grave.

Dean clapped his hands a few times, cleared his throat. Then he turned around to go back inside.

He checked on Sammy when he got back in, just to make sure. Sam looked good. Pink cheeked, still warm under the blankets. Eileen was asleep on the other sofa, taking up all the space.

Dean couldn’t resist reaching out to stroke one finger through a strand of hair that had fallen into Sam’s face. He tucked it back behind Sam’s ear, tugged the blankets up a little higher. Tucked Charlie’s scarf around his neck just in case he got cold in the night.

He rested his hand on his brother’s beloved head and muttered a few words from the book, a spell of comfort and protection. He wasn’t the witch in the family but it couldn’t hurt.

He bent to kiss the top of Sam’s head, then hooked the bottle of Jim Beam off the sideboard and headed off to bed.


End file.
